Rant #3: Podcatching Thomas Ferris Nicolaisen's Rants podcast

In the third rant, I've invited my friend and colleague Daniel Westheide (@kaffeecoder) to talk with me about how we listen to podcasts.

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Our backgrounds, history as podcast-listeners

Thomas started last spring, Android, listened a lot more after getting car stereo with bluetooth.

Daniel is the Apple/iOS guy. Started shortly after podcasts were made available at the iTunes Store; casual listener.

What devices do we have?

Daniel has the latest iPhone and iPad. Thomas has an older Samsung Galaxy S which still works great for podcasting, plus the Nexus 7/10 Android tablets.

Great Podcatchers (podcast listening apps)

Several for Android, all of them are great, but they have minor feature differences

If you just want a free one there's OneCast. Google has removed their free Listen app from Play, but you can still find the apk lying around for manually installing.

On the iOS/Apple side, Downcast is the go-to app. Apple's own Podcast app is supposedly the worst app ever.

What features do we dig?

Google Reader integration
Cross device sync (especially in-episode progress tracking)
Careful with mobile data use
Playback speed-up

What about the desktop? Other places we listen?

There is Stitcher Radio which is cross-platform and has a desktop app. Stitcher is a bit like Pandora, also a podcast directory, and radio. Also for cars and stuff in the US. Thomas tested it a bit today. Be careful with mobile data rates though! We also mention TuneIn (I forgot to mention in the cast that its Android app has some really annoying and repetitive audio ads).

Which podcasts do we listen to?

Daniel's favorites:

The Scala Types
The Scalawags
The Changelog (not very active at the moment),
Jennisodes Podcast
Plan B Talk (German, actually a radio show available as a podcast)

Thomas' favorites:

Podcatching best practices

Don’t subscribe to too much or too little. Find the balance where you always have something to listen to, but not more than you can consume.

Anything you would like to promote?

Daniel: The Neophyte's Guide to Scala blog series. Also note that Coursera's Functional Programming course will run again in a couple of weeks!

Thomas: gitminutes.com coming soon!

In the third rant, I've invited my friend and colleague Daniel Westheide (@kaffeecoder) to talk with me about how we listen to podcasts.

If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element. Use the link below to download the mp3 manually.
Link to mp3

Or stream from Soundcloud:

Show outline